The proof is in: Devops and cloud go great together

Devops needs cloud, and the cloud needs devops. Having one wthout the other means you don’t get the full potential of either.

Why? Well the ability to build applications at the “speed of need” that devops provides, if done properly, won’t have the value unless you have an agile platform like the cloud to deploy the applications on. In the same manner, the cloud needs fast and agile development, which devops provides.

I’ve made this argument before, but now there is evidence that the two together are greater than the sum of their parts. A new study by managed services provider Claranet found that 74 percent of enterprises that had migrated to the cloud had experienced challenges with ops teams limiting the potential of devops. The reason: There was no cloud at the end of the devops processes and tool chains.

Those enterprises pressed the deploy button on their IDEs, expecting their apps to hit a target platform after automated testing, integration, security checks, and configuration management. However, that process is stopped dead in its tracks because the ops team has to wait a whole month for the new server to be delivered to the datacenter, configured, and placed into production.

You’re basically buying a Lamborghini and running it on the rims. Why?

The Claranet study tracks what I’m seeing in the industry right now. While enterprises can do and fund devops, or do and fund cloud migration, they may not be able to afford both.

My advice is to start small—with apps, devops, and cloud paired in smaller chunks—so that all clouds are at the end of a devops tool chain. If you have to start with just 10 applications that use devops automation to deploy on a cloud, so be it. Scale up from there.